MSHTML Flaw Exploited to Attack Russian Dissidents

A spearphishing campaign targeting Russian citizens and government entities that are not aligned with the actions of the Russian government is the latest in numerous threats that have emerged since Russia invaded the Ukraine in February. Researchers from MalwareBytes identified a campaign last we...

Cyberattackers Cook Up Employee Personal Data Heist for Meyer

Meyer Corp., maker of Farberware and the largest cookware and bakeware distributor in the U.S., has begun notifying 2,747 employees that a cyberattack that occurred on Oct. 25 compromised their personal data. Meyer filed a notice with the state of Maine disclosing the breach, which it discovered ...

SAP Kicks Log4Shell Vulnerability Out of 20 Apps

SAP has identified 32 apps that are affected by CVE-2021-44228 – the critical vulnerability in the Apache Log4j Java-based logging library that’s been under active attack since last week. As of yesterday, Patch Tuesday, the German software maker reported that it’s already patched 20 of those apps...

Next-Gen Maldocs & How to Solve the Human Vulnerability

Any cybersecurity attack — whether it be a breach, an incident or any form of compromise — starts with hackers getting in through the door. Threat actors and adversaries rely on gaining code execution on a target system which they can then leverage to do more damage—a phase commonly referred to a...

Pair of Google Chrome Zero-Day Bugs Actively Exploited

Google has addressed two zero-day security bugs that are being actively exploited in the wild. As part of the internet giant’s latest stable channel release version 93.0.4577.82 for Windows, Mac and Linux, it fixed 11 total vulnerabilities, all of them rated high-severity. The two zero days are...

Critical Jira Flaw in Atlassian Could Lead to RCE

Atlassian has dropped a patch for a critical vulnerability in many versions of its Jira Data Center and Jira Service Management Data Center products, which can lead to arbitrary code execution. Atlassian is a platform that’s used by 180,000 customers to engineer software and manage projects, and...

Bluetooth Spoofing Bug Affects Billions of IoT Devices

A team of academic researchers have discovered a Bluetooth Low Energy BLE vulnerability that allows spoofing attacks that could affect the way humans and machines carry out tasks. It potentially impacts billions of Internet of Things IoT devices, researchers said, and remains unpatched in Android...

CWT Travel Agency Faces $4.5M Ransom in Cyberattack, Report

CWT, a giant in the corporate travel agency world with a global clientele, may have faced payment of $4.5 million to unknown hackers in the wake of a ransomware attack. Independent malware hunter @JAMESWT tweeted on Thursday that a malware sample used against CWT formerly known as Carlson Wagonli...

Ransomware Attacks Leave U.S. Hospitals Turning Away Patients

A rash of ransomware attacks this week targeted hospitals in the U.S. and Australia. The cyberattacks froze the computer systems of several medical facilities, to the point where they needed to turn away new patients and even cancel surgery appointments. A ransomware attack, reported on Tuesday,...

AMD Radeon Graphics Cards Open VMware Workstations to Attack

A remote code-execution bug exists in some configurations of the AMD Radeon graphics card that could allow an attacker to take control of a targeted system. The hack entails luring users of vulnerable systems to visit a specially crafted website that can deliver “a malformed pixel shader” to eith...

DEF CON 2019: Researchers Demo Hacking Google Home for RCE

LAS VEGAS – The Tencent Blade Team of researchers demonstrated several ways they have developed to hack and run remote code on Google Home smart speakers. The hacks center around what is known as a Magellan vulnerability, which can be used to exploit the massively popular SQLite database engine...

Finding Beauty in the IT Architecture

I have a confession to make. I’m a sucker for good architecture. Visiting places like Singapore, London, Rome, Buenos Aires, and New York City, I quickly find myself gravitating towards beautiful archways, spires, and even the voids used in designing some of the world’s most amazing buildings. I...

Microsoft Releases EMET 5.0 Exploit Mitigation Tool

The latest version of Microsoft’s freely available stopgap against zero-day exploits was released today with two new exploit mitigations and a batch of new configuration options. The update to Microsoft’s Enhanced Mitigation Experience Tool kit, or EMET, comes six months after a technical preview...

Microsoft Pushes Out Two New Security Tools

In parallel with its release of 17 bulletins on Patch Tuesday this month, Microsoft also unveiled two new tools that are meant to help make a couple of common exploitation scenarios more difficult for attackers. The company released a tool called Office File Validation for some older versions of...

Free COFEE Helps Law Enforcement Forensics

Microsoft has announced plans to give away free versions of its COFEE Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor utility to help law enforcement agencies in cyber-crime investigations. COFEE uses digital forensic technologies to help investigators gather evidence of live computer activity at the...

New Flaw in Microsoft Office Web Components Under Attack

From SearchSecurity Robert Westervelt Microsoft issued an advisory Monday, warning of a new vulnerability in Office Web Components being actively targeted by attackers. The Office Web Components allow users to view spreadsheets, charts and databases on the Web. Microsoft said the vulnerability is...

Lewd Phishing Lures Aimed at Business Explode

Attackers have amped up their use of X-rated phishing lures in business email compromise BEC attacks. A new report found a stunning 974-percent spike in social-engineering scams involving suggestive materials, usually aimed at male-sounding names within a company. The Threat Intelligence team wit...

Ziggy Ransomware Gang Offers Refunds to Victims

The Ziggy ransomware gang announced in early February they were getting out of the cybercrime business. Now they say they’re ready to refund their victims’ money. Anyone who paid a ransom to Ziggy just needs to shoot them an email with proof of payment calculated in Bitcoin and the computer ID...

Air-Gap Attack Turns Memory Modules into Wi-Fi Radios

Super-secure air-gapped computers are vulnerable to a new type of attack that can turn a PC’s memory module into a modified Wi-Fi radio, which can then transmit sensitive data at 100 bits-per-second wirelessly to nearly six feet away. Noted air-gap researcher Mordechai Guri created the...

Google Yanks 106 ‘Malicious’ Chrome Extensions

Google removed 106 Chrome browser extensions Thursday from its Chrome Web Store in response to a report that they were being used to siphon sensitive user data. In the research, also published Thursday, Awake Security alleged millions of Chrome users have been targeted by threat actors. The...

Emerging MakeFrame Skimmer from Magecart Sets Sights on SMBs

Researchers have observed a new skimmer from the prolific Magecart Group that has been actively harvesting payment-card data from 19 different victim websites, mainly belonging to small- and medium-sized businesses SMBs, for several months. RiskIQ researchers first discovered the skimmer, dubbed...

Critical CODESYS Bug Allows Remote Code Execution

A critical flaw in a web server for the CODESYS automation software for engineering control systems could allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to crash a server or execute code. The bug is rated 10 out of 10 on the CVSS v.2 vulnerability severity scale and requires little skill to exploit, th...

Elegant sLoad Carries Out Spying, Payload Delivery in BITS

A fresh analysis of the trojan sLoad sheds light on the growing trend of advanced malware “living off the land” of a targeted system and successfully evading detection and carrying out malicious activities. SLoad is a PowerShell downloader type of malware and is known for its impressive...

Maze Ransomware Behind Pensacola Attack, Data Breach Looms

The Maze ransomware is likely the culprit behind the recently reported cyberattack on Pensacola, Fla. that occurred earlier this week, which downed systems citywide. In an email sent to county commissioners, IT administrators said that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said that the...

Ransomware Attack Downs Hosting Service SmarterASP.NET

SmarterASP.NET, a popular web hosting provider with more than 440,480 customers, has been hit with a ransomware attack that took down its customers’ websites that were hosted by the company. The company on Monday said it is in the process of recovering impacted data. SmarterASP.NET offers shared...

Understanding the Ripple Effect: Large Enterprise Data Breaches Threaten Everyone

Big businesses are constantly under attack, and that affects everyone from customers and business partners to parties with national security interests. When successful, the initial compromise is only a means to an end — the real goal is to mount follow-on attacks like spearphishing, extortion...

Unencrypted Mobile Traffic on Tor Network Leaks PII

Unencrypted, sensitive and confidential user data originating from millions of mobile devices is carried on the Tor network every day. Now researchers say they have devised away to scoop up that data and create personal profiles for specific mobile users, that include GPS coordinates, web...

Former AWS Engineer Arrested as Capital One Admits Massive Data Breach

A massive breach of Capital One customer data has hit more than 100 million people in the U.S. and 6 million in Canada. Thanks to a cloud misconfiguration, a hacker was able to access to credit applications, Social Security numbers and bank account numbers in one of the biggest data breaches to...

WordPress Plugin Has Unpatched Privilege Escalation Flaw, Warn Researchers

A WordPress plugin, Slick Popup, has a serious privilege escalation flaw – and it has yet to be patched. WordPress plugin Slick Popup, which has 7,000 active installs and provides a tool for displaying the Contact Form 7 as a popup on WordPress websites. However, researchers with Wordfence said...

'Cloudborne' IaaS Attack Allows Persistent Backdoors in the Cloud

An attack scenario affecting various cloud providers could allow an attacker to implant persistent backdoors for data theft into bare-metal cloud servers, which would be able to remain intact as the cloud infrastructure moves from customer to customer. This opens the door to a wide array of attac...

Neptune Exploit Kit Dropping Cryptocurrency Miners Through Malvertisements

Despite a marked decrease in activity, exploit kits haven’t completely disappeared just yet. The Neptune, or Terror Exploit Kit, is alive and well; during the last month, researchers have observed the kit as part of a campaign to abuse a legitimate popup ad service to drop cryptocurrency miners...

Microsoft Brings HSTS to Windows 7 and 8.1

In the midst of a relatively light Patch Tuesday, Microsoft yesterday introduced an extra measure of security for users running Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 machines: HSTS. Short for HTTP Strict Transport Security, HSTS is a browser header that forces any sessions sent over...

Researchers Uncover Targeted Attack Campaign Using Android Malware

Android attacks have become all the rage in the last year or two, and targeted attacks against political activists in Tibet, Iran and other countries also have been bubbling up to the surface more and more often lately. Now those two trends have converged with the discovery of a targeted attack...

Microsoft Revokes Trust in 28 of Its Own Certificates

UPDATED–In the wake of the Flame malware attack, which involved the use of a fraudulent Microsoft digital certificate, the software giant has reviewed its certificates and found nearly 30 that aren’t as secure as the company would like and has revoked them. Microsoft also released its new updater...

An End to Offensive Security Research? Unlikely

Many industries tend to run in identifiable cycles. Financial services, the auto industry, entertainment–they all have cycles. Because the security industry isn’t nearly as old as any of these, it hasn’t had much of a chance to establish such cycles. But one seems to be appearing now in the form ...

Ransomware Attacks are on the Rise

After a recent dip, ransomware attacks are back on the rise. According to data released by NCC Group, the resurgence is being led by old ransomware-as-a-service RaaS groups. With data gathered by “actively monitoring the leak sites used by each ransomware group and scraping victim details as they...

Most Email Security Approaches Fail to Block Common Threats

On overwhelming number of security teams believe their email security systems to be ineffective against the most serious inbound threats, including ransomware. That’s according to a survey of business customers using Microsoft 365 for email commissioned by Cyren and conducted by Osterman Research...

Ukraine Hit with Novel ‘FoxBlade’ Trojan Hours Before Invasion

“As tanks rolled into Ukraine, so did malware,” summarized humanitarian author Andreas Harsono, referring to the novel malware that Microsoft has named FoxBlade. On Monday, the company reported that its Threat Intelligence Center MSTIC had detected cyberattacks launched against Ukraine’s digital...

InkySquid State Actor Exploiting Known IE Bugs

The InkySquid advanced persistent threat APT group, which researchers have linked to the North Korean government, was caught launching watering hole attacks against a South Korean newspaper using known Internet Explorer vulnerabilities. New analysis from Volexity reported its team of researchers...

HEH P2P Botnet Sports Dangerous Wiper Function

A freshly discovered botnet dubbed HEH by researchers is casting a wide net, looking to infect any and all devices that use Telnet on ports 23/2323. It’s particularly destructive: It contains code that wipes all data from infected systems. Perhaps ironically, its operators also have a penchant fo...

Zoom Zero-Day Allows RCE, Patch on the Way

UPDATE A newly discovered bug in the Zoom Client for Windows could allow remote code-execution, according to researchers at 0patch, which disclosed the existence of the flaw on Thursday after pioneering a proof-of-concept exploit for it. The issue was confirmed for Threatpost by a Zoom...

2020 Cybersecurity Trends to Watch

The wheels of 2020’s biggest cybersecurity threats have already been set motion. Mobile, the cloud and artificial intelligence, to name a few, are trends that will continue to be exploited by criminals. Couple that with the rapid growth of software development and a cybersecurity skills shortage...

LastPass Fixes Bug That Leaks Credentials

LastPass has patched a bug that could potentially allow malicious websites to access a web user’s credentials from a previously visited site. Tavis Ormandy, a vulnerability researcher from Google Project Zero, discovered the flaw in the LastPass password manager and published it on the project’s...

Insider Threats Are Rising – But They Shouldn’t Be

There’s never been a shortage of risk that organizations face from insiders gone bad — those incidents where insiders steal information from their employers, clients, partners and government agencies. Many times, malicious insiders seek monetary gain. They’ll steal information such as account...

Vulnerabilities in D-Link, Comba Routers Can Leak Credentials

Researchers have discovered vulnerabilities in D-Link and Comba Telecom routers that can leak passwords for the devices and have the potential to affect every user on networks that use them for access. Trustwave SpiderLabs Security Researcher Simon Kenin discovered the vulnerabilities—two in a...

Oracle Squashes 53 Critical Bugs in April Security Update

Oracle is urging customers to patch critical vulnerabilities in its products as part of its massive April update, which fixes a whopping 297 flaws. Of those flaws, 53 vulnerabilities in Oracle products had a CVSS score of 9.0 or higher, making them “critical” severity – and in fact, 49 of those...

xDedic Market Spilling Over With School Servers, PCs

Nearly two-thirds of servers and PCs peddled on the xDedic underground marketplace belong to schools and universities, and most are based in the United States. In a recent analysis of xDedic, Flashpoint found that besides the education sector, PC and servers tied to healthcare and legal firms mak...

Microsoft Re-Releases Broken Security Patch MS14-045

Microsoft today re-released security bulletin MS14-045, which was pulled shortly after the August Patch Tuesday updates because a number of users reported crashes and blue screens. The patch was removed from Windows Update on Aug. 15, three days after it was released as part of Microsoft’s monthl...

‘Trojan Source’ Hides Invisible Bugs in Source Code

Researchers have found a new way to encode potentially evil source code, such that human reviewers see a harmless version and compilers see the invisible, wicked version. Named “Trojan Source attacks,” the method “exploits subtleties in text-encoding standards such as Unicode to produce source co...

Postmortem on U.S. Census Hack Exposes Cybersecurity Failures

Threat actors exploited an unpatched Citrix flaw to breach the network of the U.S. Census Bureau in January in an attack that was ultimately halted before a backdoor could be installed or sensitive data could be stolen, according to a report by a government watchdog organization. However,...